The new carpets in the mosque at
Hadejia are lush; my hands sink
into their soft hairs. Around the back,
there are folds that will trip you, roadblocks
in the path of foot traffic. The air
is filled with the smell of perfumes and
the pine-orange fibers of the new carpets
and the muddy streets outside and the rains.
Light and dark cross fingers across the expanse,
and for a moment, as we all descend into
a sujud, I imagine the lattice crisscrossing
across our backs as daylight splintering
into shards. After, I look for God coiled
at the end of a tasbih, the thick bile
of the symptoms that ail me curling
up my throat. I try to rethread the stitches
that hold up my body, to treat my body as
a wound, to tongue through metaphors
for prayer. What I understand of God is
His silence. The Imam, who yesterday
prayed for a man who’d descended
into the wrappings of a straw mat
says the story of man is flux and fire.
